Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  ‘Yes, that’s it, that’s it!’ Sigurd roared. ‘Harness your rage, harness your hatred, focus all of your strength and will on destroying me, boy! Do it, kill me, tear me apart with your bare hands!’

  And then, finally, it happened. A ferociously swung right cross broke through Sigurd’s guard and landed with a wall-shuddering crunch on his jaw. Daekwon had thrown every one of his one-hundred-and-ten kilograms of brute power into the blow; it would have killed most men and certainly would have knocked even seasoned professional fighters out cold upon impact.

  Sigurd, however, was no ordinary man. The force of the punch whipped his head to the side and caused him to stumble back slightly, but as Daekwon was about to follow up with another combo, wrath blazed with signal-flare intensity in Sigurd’s pale eyes. With a burst of preternatural speed and goliath power he catapulted a counterpunch straight through Daekwon’s defences. The blow, a savage straight punch, smashed with terrible force into Daekwon’s nose, shattering the cartilage and blasting a bright light behind his eyes, and it sent him reeling back with shock.

  Sigurd coolly watched the young man stumble back and spit a mouthful of blood onto the floor. He stared for a while at the slick of bodily fluid on the floor, thick with streaks of red, glistening gruesomely in the dim light.

  ‘If only you could fathom the immensity of the power that dwells in this,’ Sigurd growled softly, pointing at his blood and saliva. ‘But that,’ he continued, indicating the bright crimson liquid streaming out of Daekwon’s nostrils from his freshly broken nose, ‘that is weakness. It is fragility. It is … ephemeral. For all the strength that now exists in those fists of yours, boy, one day, sooner than you could ever imagine, it will fade to nothing. Your skin will wrinkle up and your muscles will wither and sag. Your hair and teeth will fall out, your eyes will become milky with the cataracts and blindness of old age. And your mind – yes, the greatest asset that you possess – it too will rot. It will rot into nothing, and all the memories and experiences and knowledge that make up the essence of who you are will vanish, curling up and crumbling to ashes, like dry leaves in a forest fire. That head of yours will be filled with nothing but dust and crumbling rot. Your internal organs will start to malfunction and fail. You’ll piss yourself every night in bed, like a fucking infant. You’ll fill your pants with shit, unable to control your bodily functions, and you’ll lose your breath trying to walk up a flight of stairs. The skeleton, the foundation that your whole body rests upon, will become as brittle and weak as sun-baked plastic. Yes, those bones that are now so heavy and strong, they will crack and snap like fallen twigs in winter. Age will take you and it will break you, as surely as the sun rises in the east and burns out its fire over the western horizon. That, mortal, is weakness. Your weakness. Your doom.’

  Daekwon, with blood dripping off his chin and landing in fat, splattering drops on the floor, glared at Sigurd in silence, his features contorted into an expression that was at once awe, surprise, hatred and perplexity.

  ‘And you, m-, motherfucker?’ he finally spat. ‘You think you d-, d- different? I know you b-, beastwalkers can die too, just like us. An’ Zakaria, an’ William, an’ L- Lightnin’ Bird, an Njinga, they gon’ k-, kick yo’ sorry ass an’ put you in the fuckin’ ground. Now shut the fuck up, an’ let’s f-, finish this.’

  Sigurd rumbled out a deep, menacing laugh, his gaze never once breaking contact with Daekwon’s.

  ‘I don’t want to spar in my suit,’ he growled. ‘Allow me to slip into something more comfortable.’

  He slipped the tailored, Italian-made suit jacket off his massive shoulders, and then loosened and pulled the silk tie off his neck. With careful fingers he removed the watch from his wrist and set it down on his jacket, which was lying in a heap on the blood-spattered floor. He then undid the shoulder holster that held his still-unused Desert Eagle pistol, and he dropped this too. He unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall as well, revealing a snowy torso, ripped with marble-hewn muscle and riddled with innumerable battle scars. He then kicked off his meticulously polished black wingtips, unbuckled his crocodile-skin belt and stepped out of his pants, standing eventually before Daekwon clad only in briefs.

  ‘All right,’ the young man snarled, ‘now that you c-, comfy in yo’ damn drawers, let’s d-, do this!’

  Sigurd’s eyes shone like a cat’s in the dark. With sudden speed he surged forward, launching a rapid flurry of body blows that crashed with brutal force into Daekwon’s leanly muscled torso. Daekwon grunted, tucking in his arms and gasping as the heavy punches crashed and crunched into his ribs and stomach, even as he did his best to dodge and block them. He was used to taking punches, but Sigurd hit with more power than any opponent he had ever faced, and each blow rocketed a shock wave through his body, driving him back with force. The memory of Paola flickered in his mind’s eye like a reluctant spirit summoned at a séance, giving him the impetus he needed to fight back, and in a rapid conflagration of rage and a lust for vengeance, he ducked under one of Sigurd’s hooks and launched a counter-attack, firing off combo after furious combo with his granite fists.

  Despite his speed, despite his focus, despite his power, however, he simply could not hit the beastwalker. Sigurd ducked, blocked and bobbed, moving with astounding agility and speed, evading every single one of Daekwon’s punches. And then, when Daekwon tried to slip a savage uppercut under Sigurd’s guard, the massive warrior launched an altogether different attack. His open right hand thundered abruptly through Daekwon’s hurricane of flying fists, and at once his iron fingers slammed onto Daekwon’s throat, clamping tight with the brutal crush of a bear trap. Daekwon, startled by the sudden closeness and irresistible power of heavy fingers around his windpipe, fumbled and grasped at the locked-straight arm that was now squeezing the life out of him. He gripped the arm with steel-strong fingers and pulled with all his might, growling through gritted teeth with the effort, but the strength of the digits wrapped around his throat was phenomenal.

  ‘What happens,’ Sigurd rasped, ‘when the irresistible force meets the immovable object? Well, mortal, it turns out that the object is not so immovable after all!’ With chemical fire sizzling in his eyes in the gloom of the stairwell, Sigurd began to lift Daekwon off of his feet, inch by inch, raising him higher and higher off the ground as he throttled him. ‘Now, you insignificant insect, now you’re going to see what I really am…’

  Daekwon, despite the agony of the asphyxiation, somehow managed to focus his steadily blurring vision on the arm that was lifting him off of the ground, the arm that was crushing his windpipe … and he saw that the pale, scar-tattooed skin was changing.

  The muscles of Sigurd’s arm and torso began to ripple and distend, writhing like massively engorged maggots, and a coat of dense white fur burst through his skin as his limbs exploded in size and length. Sigurd began to cackle demonically, and his face started to stretch and warp. His flat human teeth sharpened in a mere second into enormous fangs as his features melted from those of a Norseman into those of a polar bear. This monstrous being’s height grew in a mere instant from seven feet to twelve, with the sudden increase in Sigurd’s size boosting the dangling young man right up to the concrete ceiling, into which the back of his head slammed with a crunching blow.

  Through the nightmarish daze of fading consciousness and draining life, the last thing Daekwon saw was the hellish maw of the polar bear’s canine-studded jaws lunging for his face.

  ***

  After Sigurd had transformed back into his human form, he stood nude and silent on the killing floor, his pale body sprayed, as if decorated with warpaint, with the blood of his vanquished opponents. He squatted down and picked up his watch, intending to check the time, and that was when he heard it: the pulsing, sonic whir of a helicopter cresting the distant horizon.

  With an ease of manner that was almost nonchalant despite the immediacy of gore and death around him, Sigurd slipped on his trousers and strolled over to where Daekwon’s body lay. He s
tared at the corpse for a few moments, marvelling at the damage his claws and teeth had done to the young man’s formerly sculpted torso.

  ‘You fought well, boy,’ he muttered, and then peered up the final set of stairs. ‘But all who oppose me will die. Time to finish this mission off,’ he whispered to himself, switching to his mother tongue, Old Norse, his guttural utterings reverberating around the crimson-sprayed walls of the eerily silent space. ‘Fuck them all. None of them can comprehend what I am capable of, and none can understand what is coming. A great storm, a maelstrom that will engulf the whole world! Yes … the world of mortals will fall into chaos. Soon, soon it will begin. No, today it has begun.’

  Sigurd picked up his Desert Eagle and pointed it ahead of him, punctuating his vision with the pistol’s sights, his finger resting lightly on the trigger and ready to squeeze off a semi-automatic volley in seconds if need be. He wanted to exchange words with his final adversary – he wanted, no, needed the hit of power that would course through his veins as he spoke those words, as he saw in his enemy’s eyes the crushing despair and complete loss of hope – by all the gods in Valhalla, he needed that hit, that hit that was so much more powerful than even the purest opiate known to mortals. However, staying alive while ending the life of his enemy and taking the prize was, of course, the primary concern in this mission, and should he be required to do so without that conversation … well, it would have to be done.

  The throbbing pulse of a helicopter descending from the sky was growing alarmingly loud; he did not have much time left.

  Up the stairs he travelled, moving with a deadly stealth and swiftness. He reached the top of the stairs in a few seconds, but before his arrival an uncanny tingling bathed every square inch of his skin and sent its static crackle into the very marrow of his bones. This unmistakable feeling evinced the presence of another of his kind, or, rather, others of his kind. Surely enough these beings would likewise have felt the same sensation, alerting them to Sigurd’s presence – although, of course, the wall-shaking spattering of gunfire that had echoed up through the mansion a few minutes earlier would long before have told those above of the immediacy of enemies.

  Sigurd was about to get into the most dangerous part of the mission; behind the door ahead of him was the prize, but there was also a mighty foe, or foes, to best. Foes who were doubtless heavily armed – heavily armed and expecting him. Still, he was confident that with his own ferocity, keen intelligence and raw power he would destroy them.

  ‘It’s been many years since I last looked into your eyes, you fool,’ he muttered to himself, ‘and many years since you last laid eyes upon me. But for you, this will be the last time you lay your eyes on anyone, or anything…’

  A sense of sudden urgency – or possibly a tingling of fear – stirred the blood in Sigurd’s veins. How fast would he be able to get through the door? How quickly would his opponents react? What if his enemies managed to place a lethal shot before he could reach them?

  The increasing volume of the nearing chopper’s blades spurred urgency into his blood. He had to make a choice, immediately; there would only be one way to do this, and it would not involve the gun. Yes, there was a way to protect himself against all but the most powerful of firearms, but it would also mean that he would not be able to use his own gun.

  It was a trade-off he was willing to make. He set the Desert Eagle down on the floor and stripped down as quickly as he could, and then enacted the change that shifted his form from that of a man into that of a polar bear.

  It was time to do or die; he tensed every muscle in his polar bear body, readying himself to detonate a titanic explosion of power. He drew in a final breath of air and focused all of his attention on the hell he was about to unleash. When he expelled the air from his lungs he was ready.

  Uncoiling his taut-sprung muscles in a nanosecond of unadulterated intensity, he barrelled headlong at the barrier that stood between him and the prize. The immense momentum of his seven-hundred-kilogram bear body utterly obliterated the door in an explosion of wooden shards, shattered fragments, flying woodchips and billowing sawdust.

  The reaction from within the room was instantaneous; Maksim, crouched behind an overturned sofa, began firing his assault rifle at the ursine intruder, while Lightning Bird and Jun pushed Parvati into the elevator that led to the helipad on the roof, and then, when both of them were inside it, the shaman blocked the door as it closed, using his body as a shield.

  M-16 rounds peppered Sigurd’s polar bear body in an orgy of hailstorm violence, ripping through fur, flesh and muscle. With a roar he launched himself out of the cloud of debris, straight at Maksim, reaching him in two bounds and smashing him over with a vicious swipe of his paw. His opponent’s body flew back and crashed through two widescreen monitors, destroying them in a shower of sparks and smoke, and the Ukrainian slumped over, knocked unconscious.

  Sigurd staggered back, reeling from the severity of his injuries. His white coat was spattered now with glistening red, and his vision began to blur as pain shot through his limbs. He roared and howled through the noxious smoke pouring out of the destroyed computer monitors, stumbling backwards on weakening limbs.

  No mercy would be shown here though; through the wall of blue smoke a huge shape charged: a grizzly bear. Sigurd rallied from his injuries to meet the beast, and the two behemoths met in a wall-shaking crash in the centre of the room, each lunging with dragon-like jaws and slashing with raking claws. They struggled in a deadly duel of force, smashing furniture into splinters and hurling each other against walls that cracked and shuddered from the momentum of their bodies. Sigurd was badly injured from the smattering of assault rifle bullets and the resulting blood loss, but he, like many of the ancient beastwalkers, had over the centuries developed powers beyond mere shapeshifting, powers that verged on the superhuman in their intensity – and one of Sigurd’s powers, a skill he had been honing for almost a thousand years, was that of brutal, elephantine strength.

  A red aura shimmered around the edges of his paws, and with a resounding roar he swiped his right paw in a heavy cross that sent the grizzly stumbling back in shock. The smashing force would have torn the head off of any man’s shoulders, and even for the grizzly bear, with his four-inch-thick skull, the blow felt as if it had been struck by an ogre wielding a sledgehammer.

  Sigurd wasted no time in pressing his advantage now that his opponent was stunned and on his back foot; he blazed forward in a multi-hit mauling offensive, hammering his foe with blow after supercharged blow, and it was all that the grizzly could do to remain upright under this rain of devastating attacks. Then, with a lunge of his massive polar bear jaws, which were also tinged with the glowing red aura of power, Sigurd sank his teeth into the grizzly’s shoulder, biting down with titanic force. With a flick of his neck and shoulders, he hurled the huge bear across the room, and the creature’s enormous body crashed into a wooden cabinet, which exploded in a rapidly expanding cloud of dust, shattered plywood and raining papers. The grizzly lay there, rumbling a low growl of pain, and Sigurd shifted into his human form.

  He stood panting and bleeding, searching the room for the prize.

  Parvati, however, was not there; the elevator had already whisked her and Jun away, up to the roof, from whence could be heard the deep pulsing throb of the helicopter as it began to ascend. Sigurd ran over to the elevator and hammered the button to call it down, but it had already been disabled. Now, over and above the heady adrenalin drenching the inside of every vein and artery in his body with its liquid power, a new sensation started snaking its thorny tendrils through every cubic inch of his body: rage.

  He locked his eyes into those of the grizzly, burning his wrath across the gulf of space between them and pushing it directly into his foe’s brain. The grizzly also transformed into human form, and there, amidst the settling debris of the destroyed cabinet, lay Lightning Bird.

  ‘You’re too late, Sigurd. She’s gone,’ he gasped, his voice weak and reedy.r />
  ‘Then you will tell me where she is going, Indian,’ Sigurd growled in response.

  ‘You will never find Parvati. Never. She’ll be moved her far from here, far beyond your reach.’

  A white-hot anger blazed in Sigurd’s pale eyes.

  ‘I will make you tell me, I guarantee that, you worthless maggot. You can do it now, and I’ll give you a quick death … or you can do it after most of your insides have been spread across this room like a living rug as I slowly eat you alive.’

  Lightning Bird glowered at him, and a stony defiance steeled his gaze.

  ‘I do not fear you, slaver,’ he muttered. ‘You … Huntsmen, Alliance, you’re all the same. Vile, self-serving brutes and cowards, all of you. And you, you’re even worse than them. A traitor to your own kind, an assistant to those who are bent on destroying everything green and good that is left in this world. Tell me, traitor, is whatever power, whatever money they offered you going to be worth it when it all ends? When everything alive finally dies, when they’ve poisoned the water and the air so much that not even weeds or bacteria can survive? What then will you do with all your money and power? You filth … you disgust me.’ Lightning Bird spat a slick of blood and saliva onto the carpet and snarled before he continued. ‘Go on then, kill me. Get it over with. You won’t get a single word out of me.’

  ‘You think you know what drives me, Indian, but trust me, you don’t. You see, the Huntsmen don’t even know I’m here. I need to take Parvati alive, because I need what is hidden in her brain. You don’t know what my true goals are, and neither do those fucking Huntsmen.’

  Lightning Bird stared in sudden confusion at Sigurd.

  ‘To what end, slaver?’

  Sigurd chuckled darkly before replying.